Pages

Sunday, March 9, 2014

A baby and a wedding... all within 12 hours!

Oh boy. This past week has been one of those, "Hang on, or you'll fall off the train" kind of weeks. We spent the first few days of the week preparing for our son's wedding, which was last Friday. There was a fair amount of running around and getting things crossed of my list, but I felt like we had a good handle on it. Then came Wednesday evening. We went to the temple with my son's fiance in preparation for their wedding. While we were there, we joked that "Lindsay is probably going into labor since we're all here, and she can't get in touch with us". In reality, her due date wasn't til March 17th, so we felt pretty safe. As soon as we got back to our phones, we realized that our joking matter was a reality. Her water broke while we were all gone! Thankfully, it turned out that she had a while to wait for baby to arrive, so things were somewhat in control. She was just starting to get panicky, though.

She didn't really start labor til the next day, but we were still sleeping lightly and checking our phones all through the night, in case we had somehow slept through an important call from her. That next day, Thursday, I had about a zillion things to do -- all of those pre-wedding things that have to wait til the last day to get done. So, I set up for the luncheon at the reception center. I was pretty fragmented in my thought process all day long, so I forgot things, or decided I needed to add this or that... I was going back and forth from our home to the reception center to See's (not a bad stop... they gave me a sample every time I dropped in) all day long.

See's Chocolates for all...can't go wrong with that!

A glass candlestick from the dollar store,with a cork in the top. We inserted a paper clipinto the cork, and that was the clipthat held the photos in place.

I finally got all of that in place, and about that same time, Lindsay and Ryan were getting checked into the birthing center.

Bob, Whitney and I all headed there to be the support group. Lindsay did a great job (no epidural... whaaaaatt?!) and we watched so many reruns of Pawn Stars that we saw Chumlee lose weight and grow his hair long all in one night. To make several hours of labor into a shorter story, somewhere around 10:30, Linday was dilated to a 6. A half hour later, she moved to a 9. As the midwife walked past us (we were all out in the waiting room at the time, including Ryan, who was out with us for a bit), I asked her, "You're going to let Ryan know when she starts pushing, right?", and she said, "Oh, yes... we'll start that in a while, and we'll come and get him". We chatted for a few minutes, and the midwife suddenly pops in and says excitedly, "The baby was just born!". Again, whaaaaatt?! Linds literally let out a yell, and the wee one was born. Just like that. Can you stand it?! We all missed it, including Ryan!

And it's a girl! They had waited to find out, so we all had our guesses, but no one knew for sure. They named her Zuma Preslie, and she is a doll... perfect in every way.

We didn't end up leaving the birthing center til 1:30am, and we climbed into bed around 2:00. I tossed and turned a bit, over-excited by the new grandbaby's birth, and also anticipating the wedding events of the next day. I heard Lindsay and Ryan come in at about 3:30 (they don't really let you stay long at the birthing center, so we had offered for them to come and stay at our house for a week or so). I got up and helped them get settled, and then climbed back into bed to try to get a few hours of sleep before the big day ahead.

And Friday was beautiful. Everything went as planned -- the wedding, the luncheon and the reception. It was a lovely, exhausting day, and I couldn't have been more thrilled. Wils is our last child to get married, and he married a gem! We count ourselves the luckiest people in the world to have all of our kids married to truly amazing, beautiful people. We love them all, and consider them our own.

Our family... missing the newest little family of three

These are some of the wedding reception details. I didn't have anything to do with the reception decor, but I loved what they did, and wanted to share...

Vintage bi-fold doors withlace-filled embroidery hoops

Gorgeous paper flowers strewn across the walls

The "sign-in book" was squares of fabric that the guestssigned their names and a message on, which will laterbe made into a quilt